www.NewWaveFeminists.com

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Can you imagine a world without abortion?

What would it look like? Pro-choicers want us to believe it would be filled with hemorrhaging women, self-aborting and dying in the streets, but I'm not buying that.

When I imagine what the world would look like if our fertility were treated as the super power it is, and the life of the unborn human given the respect it deserves, I see a place that's a whole hell of a lot more pro-woman than what we have now.

Think about it. Currently when a low-income woman gets pregnant (or a young woman, or a single woman, or really any woman who doesn't have a life deemed “suitable” by society to bring children into) she is met with all types of hostility. Simply for having the audacity to, ya know, actually have the kid that clearly already exists inside her womb.

She basically has to make her case for why she should be able to STAY pregnant and how she plans on supporting said child with the least amount of inconvenience to society as possible.

Her partner resents her; her boss resents her; her community resents her. She and her child--whose life is considered "a choice" (and because she CHOSE to keep the baby this is all her responsibility of course)--are now a burden to others. An inconvenience. This makes the fertile female person a liability to employers and partners.

But what if we lived in a world that realized that once a new life had come into existence, the time for "choosing" whether or not it existed, was over? What if we lived in a world where that woman, no matter her age, income, or status, was accommodated rather than resented?

Because more than 50 million unborn children have been aborted over the last 43-years, we can't know how society would have accommodated women if such a high number had continued with their pregnancies.

Had the unborn person not been viewed as disposable, the world would've had to adjust.

Our culture and our corporations would have had to accept that--guess what!--women sometimes grow new people in their bodies and it's freakin' amazing. And not only should we respect the hell out of that, but we as a society might want to help a sister out a little bit more because without happy healthy women, society screeches to a halt.

Unfortunately, we don't live in that world though. We live in a world where if you experience an unplanned pregnancy you are expected to work twice as hard to make up for you fertility. That child is not a blessing, it's a burden. It's not a person, it's a problem.

Because abortion is an option, when a woman doesn't "choose" to terminate her pregnancy, by default she's choosing to burden her employer, her partner, her community.

"Had the unborn person not been viewed as disposable, the world would've had to adjust."

Yes. We could also say that legal abortion is an "escape valve" -- an escape valve for the social pressure that would have built up in the presence of all those babies -- pressure for change: http://blog.secularprolife.org/2016/02/next-steps-for-pro-life-feminist.html

Recently someone said to me, in relation to pro-life feminist thinking, "Strange to see someone argue that giving people more sovereignty over their own bodies is [patriarchal]."

But "sovereignty" of course means a right to kill their offspring, and it turns out that when you give someone that right, whatever happens next is their own problem -- they are on their own. If they decide against abortion and opt to carry the pregnancy to term, then to the father of the baby, and to society, it will seem that they brought the burdens of pregnancy on themselves. And if they decide to raise the child, then it is a much bigger problem yet that they "brought on themselves." Whereas if they decide to abort, no one will suffer any negative physical or psychological consequences as much as they will (though they undeniable stand to gain something as well).

Can we at least agree on this -- that, though it may be paradoxical, pregnant women who DON'T want to abort will be better off in a society where abortion is not a legal option -- where they DON'T have legal "sovereignty over their own bodies" ?

So they will be better off, whereas women who do want to abort, assuming they win the small physical gamble they take when they get the legal abortion, would be better off in a society where abortion is legal -- better off, that is, in terms of their materialistic situation and ambitions.

Assuming that "better off in terms of their materialistic situation and ambitions" is really better off, in net, for that group of women, then we see that a society where abortion is not a legal option will be better for one group of women and worse for another group of women, and whether it is better for women overall might just depend on how many there are in each group.

And IS "better off in terms of their materialistic situation and ambitions" in fact better off for women who want to abort? A very deep question.

An academic paper, by a woman named Sidney Callahan, on what is lost by women where abortion is legal, is "Abortion and the Sexual Agenda: A Case for Pro-Life Feminism," in Therese Lysaught et. al., On Moral Medicine, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2013). I haven't found it free online, but Charles Camosy summarized it in Chapter 5 of his book Beyond the Abortion Wars, and an extensive excerpt of that chapter can be found here -- I recommend it:

Interesting post. You seem to imply that being "better off" is a matter of perspective. I would agree, as everyone wants different things for themselves.

Overall though I would have to say abortion being illegal is better off for more people; better off for women as it's an unnecessary health risk (not to be confused with losing a baby due to pregnancy complications such as ectopic or some other issue where dr's couldn't save them) and better off for the little person inside them (who could be male or female) as it allows them to live(unless something else causes them to lose their life.

"You seem to imply that being 'better off' is a matter of perspective"

I do not mean simply that where abortion is legal, group A of women will subjectively feel better and group B will feel worse. (Or that where abortion is ILlegal, group B of women will subjectively feel better and group A will feel worse.) I am not talking mainly about subjective feelings. I am talking about concrete well-being in the material world. Let's do the math.

WHERE ABORTION IS ILLEGAL:

Women who DO NOT want to abort will lose nothing.

What they will gain --

1. "If a child is conceived and is unwanted by the father, but its birth seems unavoidable because abortion is illegal, the father may feel morally obligated to help. But if abortion is legal, the father’s attitude is likely to be 'She chose to have that child against my will. I will only do the bare minimum required by child support laws.'” (See "Next Steps for the Pro-Life Feminist Movement" http://blog.secularprolife.org/2016/02/next-steps-for-pro-life-feminist.html )

2. Similarly, employers will no longer be able to resist pressure for paid maternity leave and other benefits by saying, "She could have aborted, so if she chose to have the child, that's her problem."

3. Those women will not have to live in a society that sends the message, "The way for women to have status in society is to be like men (unpregnant)."

Women who DO want to abort will lose --

1. some freedom in their lives.

2. Abortions will be less accessible and a little less safe.

What they will gain -- The abortions would have harmed some of them psychologically, though it is debatable whether this is a big number. Those who are deterred from abortion will avoid this harm.

WHERE ABORTION IS LEGAL:

Women who do not want to abort will gain nothing and will lose the above-mentioned gains.

Women who DO want to abort will gain the above-mentioned freedom and abortion access.

What they will lose --

1. the abortions will harm some of them psychologically, though it is debatable whether this is a big number.

2. They will have to live in a society that sends the message, "The way for women to have status in society is to be like men (unpregnant)."

So where abortion is ILlegal, women who don't want to abort are better off in concrete ways, and women who do want to abort are somewhat worse off in concrete ways (unless the unconscious psychological harm is very significant and is suffered by many of them).

So finally, are all women as a group better off where abortion is ILlegal? Those who don't want to abort will be better off, and those who do want to abort will be worse off, so the answer depends on how many women fall in each group (and the comparative degrees of "better off"). Now suppose (to use a round, convenient figure) that in the US the number of women of child-bearing age is 100 million. If 90 million of them do not want to abort and 10 million do want to abort, then clearly women as a group will be better off. Of course the proportion is not really like that, but this is how we would calculate.

ChaoticNight, nine days ago I posted, above, about how different groups of women are affected by the legality of abortion. I have now made a more developed presentation of that idea on the Secular Pro-Life blog:

". . . Sidney Callahan. 40+ years ago she wrote an academic paper titled "Abortion and the Sexual Agenda: A Case for Pro-Life Feminism." . . . I haven't found it free online . . ."

But now I’ve found it, apparently complete:

http://www.angelfire.com/ego/staples009/images/15.htm

It concludes:

"Another and different round of feminist consciousness raising is needed in which all of women's potential is accorded respect. This time, instead of humbly buying entrée by conforming to male lifestyles, women will demand that society accommodate itself to them.

"New feminist efforts to rethink the meaning of sexuality, femininity, and reproduction are all the more vital as new techniques for artificial reproduction, surrogate motherhood, and the like present a whole new set of dilemmas. In the long run, the very long run, the abortion debate may be merely the opening round in a series of far-reaching struggles over the role of human sexuality and the ethics of reproduction. Significant changes in the culture, both positive and negative in outcome, may begin as local storms of controversy. We may be at one of those vaguely realized thresholds when we had best come to full attention. What kind of people are we going to be? Prolife feminists pursue a vision for their sisters, daughters, and grand-daughters. Will their great-grand-daughters be grateful?"

I am replying here to Matt Conrad's Facebook comment ( https://www.facebook.com/NewWaveFeminists/posts/1344960075526110?comment_id=1345026558852795&reply_comment_id=1346636958691755&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D ) related to this blog post, since it is difficult for me to reply on Facebook:

"Saying you've thought about finite resources, and are still pro-life, so therefore I shouldnt worry about it, isn't gonna fly. I'm not gonna just take your word that I will come to the same conclusion. You have to tell me why you came to that conclusion."

I implicitly told you in my first reply to you, and I thought you would remember that. I wrote:

"By exactly the same logic, we could wipe out some of the babies already born, or 4-year-olds already born, or 20-year-olds. It might seem very logical to kill all the homeless, or all the street children in a 3rd-world country. But just when we're about to do it, an inner voice tells us to stop . . ."

At the time, you replied that morality was off the subject. But now you are asking ME why I say "that finite resources doesn't justify abortion, or even being pro-choice," and my reason is morality. So I did already tell you why (in brief), in a way that is not off the subject.

You have quoted me as writing, "You had clearly said that it might be good...," and you have replied, "I have said no such thing."

What I had written, in full, was: "You had clearly said that it might be good to kill some unborn babies so that we can use the resources for the homeless."

Here is what you had written:

"it [a world without abortion] would still cause a burden. . . . a lot of resources would've been shifted to care for all these babies being born, which would necessarily mean those resources aren't being directed towards something else. . . . Like taking care of the homeless."

If what you had written did not mean that "it might be good to kill some unborn babies so that we can use the resources for the homeless," what did it mean?

While I can appreciate a lot from the perspective of pro-lifers, this point is blatantly untrue. The unwed mother would have been accommodated? BY WHO???? When has that EVER happened? Our society used to SHUN women who got pregnant out of wedlock and created a child she couldn't take care of. She was labeled a whore. Those who were lucky quietly left their babies in church door steps or their parents moved to a different town so her mothe could claim SHE had the baby to prevent the "awful shameful" truth from being known. And women absolutely did die getting illegal abortions.

Our society has NEVER respected let alone accomided women having children that were inconvenient for it. Every day I turn on the news I see republican pundits shreiking about unwed mothers leeching off of society just because they "pumped out another legal defendant". The ultimate welfare stereotype is a "lazy" poor woman having babies she can't take care of at the expense of the tax payer and republicans have made it a crusade to cut their benefits and stop "subsidizing laziness".

In what period of time are you thinking it was ever different? When were unwed mothers "accommodated"? Seriously WHEN???? I can't even think of what period in history you MIGHT be exaggerating from. They've always been treated like filth. Disowned and degraded and shamed. Their "bastard" children too.

Society used to "accommodate" women like this (black women in aproriclar" by sterilizing them without their consent when they gave birth (google eugenics in the USA).

I understand the principle of pro-life and the desire to protect the unborn. I do. But that cannot be done with blatantly ignoring ALL OF HISTORY and snuggling up with a pleasant lie about what life would be like for unwed mothers who find themselves pregnant in this world.

WaitingToBegin82, aren't you going to the other extreme of what you characterize as exaggeration? You write as if the shame of unwed motherhood had never changed. You write as if there had never been a sexual revolution in the 1960's. Maybe you are very young, but I grew up in the 1950's and I know how different things are now. And it seems to me that one reason for the de-shaming has been simply the numbers of visible unwed mothers -- in other words, things changed because those mothers had to be accommodated. So I don't see anything wrong with the blog post's thesis that if there had been more births, without abortion, there would have been more accommodation of different kinds. The position of the Republicans you refer to would have been made more untenable.

Two years ago there was an Atlantic article, "Why Is the Abortion Rate Falling?" http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/why-is-the-abortion-rate-falling/383300/

"Meanwhile, marriage has receded further from the cultural experience of the less affluent two-thirds of American society. As the wages of non-college-educated men have tumbled, marriage has looked like an increasingly pointless and even dangerous choice for poorer women. As marriage fades, unwed motherhood has evolved from an acceptable outcome to something close to an inevitability. . . .

"This is the fascinating irony of the pro-life movement. The cause originated as a profoundly socially conservative movement. Yet as it grew, it became less sectarian. Women came to the fore as leaders. It found a new language of concern and compassion, rather than condemnation and control. MOST RADICALLY AND DECISIVELY, THE MOVEMENT MADE ITS PEACE WITH UNWED PARENTHOOD AS THE INESCAPABLE REAL-WORLD ALTERNATIVE TO ABORTION."

The falling abortion rate is an empirical fact that we have to deal with, and if the Atlantic's explanation is not the correct one, then what is?

You saidBecause abortion is an option, when a woman doesn't "choose" to terminate her pregnancy, by default she's choosing to burden her employer, her partner, her community.

Unfortunately this is true, this is the world we live in today. It is a burden in a lot of ways to bring children into this world even in the best of circumstances. Even with married couples, in most both have to work, which means their are daycare expenses, have to take materninity leave, which is not paid for most employers. Carrying a pregnancy to term is a hardship, in this post modern society where you just don't need to have as many people to do farming and other manual labor anymore. We are in a knowledge based society now, and dual income society, women have to work for the most part. I don't see this really changing back to how it was before, when parenting was not such a burden.

I have a question, what kind of support should be given to women with unplanned pregnancy? would you support government paid day care and maternity leave? or pass laws forcing employers to pay it and not discriminate fertile women? what exactly do you mean by support?

If this that you claim were true then the out cry for legalized abortion would not have happened! Women have always been expected to have children! Yet, as many mentioned you live in a fantasy world if you think unwed mothers are celebrated , or what the world wants more of! Being a single mom is one of the hardest things to be! You fight for child support, you fight for help from your own fucking government, you have to work extra hard to create enough income, be everywhere you need to be and get shit done .. So yes it is a damn good reason to have an abortion if you were raped, if your partner has abandoned you etc.Back to my first point, this society is a sick christian / religious based society and it has always been 100% about forcing women into motherhood.Have you not heard of the 1950's? America was basically thriving off making money from women by shoving shit down their throat to be the best wife and mother. She was expected to give up education, have no aspiration in life other than being a wife and mom. That is what created the push for abortion!!! How do you call yourself a feminist yet don't think women are smart enough to make a choice for themselves?You push this white, privileged, conservative religious sounding shit that is just not true.Just because women FINALLY started feeling empowered enough to say they don't want to be wives/mothers and fought for their right to an abortion does NOT at all mean society wants them , or forces them to not be mothers lol. Most absurd shit I've ever read... PS I am a mother of 3, I've been a single mother, I've been a working mother, stay at home mother, I've never felt whatever it is you feel that compels you to be an asshole, and say your personal choice is what all women should do! Shame on you!

If this that you claim were true then the out cry for legalized abortion would not have happened! Women have always been expected to have children! Yet, as many mentioned you live in a fantasy world if you think unwed mothers are celebrated , or what the world wants more of! Being a single mom is one of the hardest things to be! You fight for child support, you fight for help from your own fucking government, you have to work extra hard to create enough income, be everywhere you need to be and get shit done .. So yes it is a damn good reason to have an abortion if you were raped, if your partner has abandoned you etc.Back to my first point, this society is a sick christian / religious based society and it has always been 100% about forcing women into motherhood.Have you not heard of the 1950's? America was basically thriving off making money from women by shoving shit down their throat to be the best wife and mother. She was expected to give up education, have no aspiration in life other than being a wife and mom. That is what created the push for abortion!!! How do you call yourself a feminist yet don't think women are smart enough to make a choice for themselves?You push this white, privileged, conservative religious sounding shit that is just not true.Just because women FINALLY started feeling empowered enough to say they don't want to be wives/mothers and fought for their right to an abortion does NOT at all mean society wants them , or forces them to not be mothers lol. Most absurd shit I've ever read... PS I am a mother of 3, I've been a single mother, I've been a working mother, stay at home mother, I've never felt whatever it is you feel that compels you to be an asshole, and say your personal choice is what all women should do! Shame on you!

Shawna Middleton: "If this that you claim were true then the out cry for legalized abortion would not have happened!"

But the author's claim was:

"Because more than 50 million unborn children have been aborted over the last 43-years, we can't know how society would have accommodated women if such a high number had continued with their pregnancies."

At the time of the outcry for legalized abortion, society had not begun to accommodate women (with respect and support for inconvenient motherhood), and the author doesn't deny that. You seem to think she is claiming that that accommodation had already begun (and therefore you reply -- correctly if she were really saying that -- that if it had begun, the outcry for legalized abortion would not have happened, or would have been more muted). But she is not claiming that it had already begun. She is saying that if abortion had been out of the question and therefore many millions of unwanted children had started to accumulate, a pressure on society would have been created that never in fact occurred -- hence we can't know what would have happened, but she thinks what would have happened would have been accommodation (in the form of respect and support for inconvenient motherhood).

The spearhead of that pressure on society could have been 1960s and 1970s feminists demanding such accommodation. But that never happened because they found what for them was an easier way out -- demanding abortion instead. (In an earlier post above I called legal abortion "an escape valve for the social pressure.") It was easier, but instead of ending oppression, it simply redistributed the oppression from born women onto unborn women (and unborn men). Only a few feminists felt revolted by that redistribution, and, for instance, formed Feminists for Life.

Oh yes simplistic answers that will never happen only in some fantasyland where people only have sex for procreation. In the real world due to human nature human beings will still have sex. Their will always be unplanned pregnancies, this issue will not go away.

Indeed. Sex can be quite pleasurable but it's a reproductive act! I choose and ACCEPT my risk of pregnancy when I engage but if someone absolutely cannot accept that risk, they really need to reconsider their actions and/or birth control method. Fertility awareness is a great options for some too if you can learn it and practice it consistently, but still you either abstain on fertile days or use protections and accept the risk of pregnancy.

It baffles me how disconnected some people are to sex and pregnancy; really like any other decisions you make you have to look at YOUR situation and the options personally available to you. If I don't have the money to buy something I don't buy it. If I don't agree to the terms of a contract I don't sign it. And if I can't accept the risk of pregnancy I don't do the act that puts me at risk.

That said, I'm fortunate to have a lot of common sense and emotional maturity. As a teen I never gave into peer pressure and the first time I had sex I was 18 and with the only boy I have ever been in love with (whom I am still close with to this day). We had a pregnancy scare once, by no means did he run.

And I didn't come from a perfect home either. My family was loving, but also there were some issues where I felt like they were against me and would do things just to hurt me. I was told if I ever got pregnant I'd be "out", and when I confided in my mom about body image issues at around 14 she accused more than asked me if I had had sex. I know more about my body since self studying fertility awareness than I ever learned in health class or child development.

I could have just as easily turned out quite different, pregnant at 16 or something or heaven forbid pressured myself into an abortion because I knew I couldn't go home if I had been pregnant. It's SO SO important to educate our youth on their bodies and sexual reproduction -and to just make wise choices in general. But you still never know how much they will take in or the choices they will make (as a teen or adult) on their own despite what they have learned. So from my own personal experiences I think one should teach prevention (because obviously it makes sense to NOT create a child if you don't actually want and/or can't afford one) but at the same time emphasis that help and support ARE out there if it happens. And if it's your kid, please don't scare them away from confiding in you by threatening to throw them out.

I agree with you, in a perfect world full of perfect humans, people would be responsible and think before having sex. That is not the reality we live in though. That is why abortion needs to stay legal. I take the world as it is, not as I would want it to be.

First of all, pro-choice doesn't mean a woman has to choose an abortion. It means she has all options and she can choose what is best for her. All the pro-choice people I know are very much in favor of women keeping their babies whenever possible, and they work to make sure they have loving communities for those babies to be born into. Second, abortions will always be necessary, therefore they should always be safe and legal (and hopefully rare, to paraphrase HRC). There will always be fetuses that are non-viable and need to be surgically removed (this is called an abortion too in medical terms), rapes, women with various mental and physical conditions that make pregnancy extremely dangerous. There are also, a sad fact of this world, women in violent, coercive situations, poor women, women without safety nets who can't carry children to term. You can't make make abortion illegal and have government sifting through these myriad complex cases, deciding who gets an abortion and who doesn't. That needs to be between a woman and doctor. So if you want to be pro-life, fine, do it, but it can't be making abortion illegal and by spreading mis-information about what pro-choice means. You have to do it by promoting the health and safety of women, through greater access to birth control, childcare, better paying jobs, domestic violence protections, etc.

?? The blog post only used the word "pro-choice" once, and on that occasion did not use it in a way that indicated what the word means. Since they didn't indicate what it means, I don't think they misled anyone as to what it means.

Pro Life groups DO advocate for the health and safety of women. We just recognize the woman isn't the ONLY one who needs advocating for. And we don't believe killing someone innocent should be a legal choice.

FYI elective abortion is NOT the same thing as medically necessary procedures where the baby and/or woman may possibly die but dr's try and SAVE them. Abortions are meant to KILL period.

As incredible as it is to have the ability to give birth, some women simply do not desire to give birth or raise a child. That's a woman's choice and a woman's right. I think we can all agree that birth control and sex education are the most effective ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies and decrease abortion. There's no doubt that the rate of abortion has decreased due to increased access to birth control. More women are able to access more effective means of birth control such as IUDs that were previously very expensive. Access to birth control and education should be our united goal.

"some women simply do not desire to give birth or raise a child. That's a woman's choice and a woman's right."

The blog post does not say that any woman must raise any child. No pro-lifer says that. The blog post says, "What if we lived in a world where that woman . . . was accommodated rather than resented?" One way for society to accommodate her would be to take the baby off her hands.

I agree with your statement about society accommodating childbearing women, the only thing is adoption is not an alternative to pregnancy, what about the woman that does not want to continue a pregnancy because pregnancy forces a woman to have to take leave to give birth and or call in sick due to pregnancy related issue like morning sickness or other complications, the only alternative to pregnancy is abortion at this time.

You made a point about access to birth control. I did not miss it, but I did not choose to reply to it.

You also made another point, in which you did not mention birth control. You asserted:

"some women simply do not desire to give birth or raise a child. That's a woman's choice and a woman's right."

You made that assertion in reply to a blog post which expresses the view that a pregnant woman does NOT have a moral right not to give birth (for instance, "once a new life had come into existence, the time for 'choosing' [is] over").

So I could only understand your --

"some women simply do not desire to give birth or raise a child. That's a woman's choice and a woman's right"

-- as taking issue with the blog post's opinion that a pregnant woman does not have a moral right not to give birth. Did you not intend to take issue with that opinion?

beretta1071: "[for] the woman that does not want to continue a pregnancy because [of the burden of pregnancy itself,] the only alternative to pregnancy is abortion"

Mia had written: "some women simply do not desire to give birth or raise a child. That's a woman's choice and a woman's right." I took issue with her only about the pro-life stance on raising, not about the pro-life stance on giving birth. She and you both understand the pro-life stance on giving birth correctly (normally a woman, if pregnant, should be required to give birth), and you understand that pregnancy and giving birth are a burden, and I also understand that. I give my reasons for my position in "Bodily Rights and a Better Idea" http://www.noterminationwithoutrepresentation.org/bodily-rights-and-a-better-idea/

Yeah I know I already debated you on that issue and we disagree on your idea of supposed impartial panel to decide who gets to abort or not, I do remember our discussion. I told you will never be able to find in impartial panel, not in the real world we all live in especially on this emotionally charged issue.

"Bodily Rights and a Better Idea" does not mention panels. It only tries to "show that . . . there is no strong bodily-rights argument against making many abortions illegal." Once it is established that they may be made illegal, I think that panels would be the ideal way to administer the law, but I told you that shortcut approaches would be possible. So an objection to panels, alone, would not be a reason to think that abortion should remain legal.

Bodily autonomy IS the argument for abortion and if anything the most important argument. Women become 2nd class citizens and mere incubators without our bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy trumps the right to life all the time, for we own our bodies and what happens inside of us. The panels, well here again you are reducing us to 2nd class citizens by subjecting women to panels to reclaim bodily autonomy, how would you like it if you had to be subjected to such panel?

beretta1071: "Bodily autonomy trumps the right to life all the time, for we own our bodies and what happens inside of us."

Well, we certainly have a psychological SENSE of body ownership. I wrote in "Bodily Rights and a Better Idea" ( http://www.NoTerminationWithoutRepresentation.org/bodily-rights-and-a-better-idea/ ): "People are psychologically constructed with a strong sense of ownership of their bodies. Ownership of any kind has no foundation in science, and a strong principle of individual body ownership would be very debatable philosophically, but the psychological sense is a reality. And due to sharing that sense, which is to say, due to belief in the validity of that sense . . . society sometimes grants to its citizens surprising rights . . ."

In a reply of mine to you on this page (which now seems to have disappeared from this page), I first referred you to "Bodily Rights and a Better Idea," which is a post on my blog. Thereafter under another post on my blog, you wrote, "I believe that if we lose our bodily autonomy (even during pregnancy) we are nothing but slaves (2nd class citizens)." You did not make clear whether you had seen "Bodily Rights and a Better Idea" (which tries to undermine the bodily-rights argument for abortion rights), so I mentioned it again and asked:

"Have you seen that post and do you now express support for that argument in spite of having seen the post? If so, how did that post fail, for you, to undermine the bodily-rights argument for abortion rights?"

Now you have repeated, "Women become 2nd class citizens and mere incubators without our bodily autonomy."

So I will repeat my reply to you: "Have you seen that post and do you now express support for that argument in spite of having seen the post? If so, how did that post fail, for you, to undermine the bodily-rights argument for abortion rights?"

Well you might find it just to be subjected to such panel, however I would NOT be, nor millions of other people probably share that same sentiment.

Now I did ready your post on Bodily autonomy Rights and a Better idea. I understand what you are trying to say. The problem is that you want a one size fits all approach, and you don't take into account that some people have a stronger psychological body ownership sense than others. So one person might accept being pregnant for 9 months even if they did not want and would adjust to it just fine. Others like myself who feels completely disgusted with pregnancy would not and I would find a way to self- abort even if it was illegal, and probably many others and then you would have the problem of women self-aborting and possibly causing harm to themselves.

So it is better to keep abortion legal as it is because logistically and judicially it would be almost impossible to try to vett approvals for abortions vial panel. Women could just lie and make up reasons like maybe rape or severe mental trauma just to be allowed to have an abortion, so how would you distinguish between legitmate claims of bodily autonomy and made up ones? Then the ones that truly need them would probably be denied because that is just the way things work out. When something is abused, the legitimate ones are the ones that suffer. Their is no way to realistically separate good/bad reasons for abortions.

beretta1071: "you want a one size fits all approach, and you don't take into account that some people have a stronger psychological body ownership sense than others."

Once before you wrote: "my sense of bodily autonomy is probably more exaggerated than others," and I reminded you that I had invited you to read "Bodily Rights and a Better Idea," and I quoted from it:

"And of course the strength of the sense of body ownership itself must vary from person to person and from culture to culture. A society’s laws and customs must reflect its perception of a kind of average strength for that society." I went on, "A few further thoughts on this can be found by searching 'average' ."

What do you think of that "average" idea? (If you would like to comment, better to comment under that post rather than here.)

"I would find a way to self- abort even if it was illegal, and probably many others and then you would have the problem of women self-aborting and possibly causing harm to themselves."

Whenever there is any unwanted pregnancy, there is rarely going to be any completely happy solution. We have to find the least of the evils. What is the least of evils? One pro-lifer pointed out, "If the unborn are not human, then I agree, we should make abortions as safe as possible, because the only human being in the equation (besides the abortionist) is the mother. If the unborn are human, then the safety of killing that human is not the topic we should be focused on."

Studies have shown that where abortion is illegal, it is true that "many" get illegal abortions, but it is also true that many don't, and therefore many children's lives are saved. And pro-choice forces have spread myths about the danger of illegal abortions (I could refer you to some documentation if you're interested). When abortion was illegal in the US before Roe v. Wade, it is not true that thousands of women a year were dying from illegal abortions. The vast majority of illegal abortions were performed safely by qualified doctors. (There is even a 1960 Planned Parenthood document that makes this statement.)

"Can you imagine a world without abortion? What would it look like? Pro-choicers want us to believe it would be filled with hemorrhaging women, self-aborting and dying in the streets, but I'm not buying that."

"Women could just lie and make up reasons"

You have a point, though I don't think the point is so strong as to lead to your conclusion. The answer is complex, and I hope to address it soon.

You are right that in the 1960's women were not dying in the thousands, but at that time abortion was not acceptable so most women did not seek to procure illegal abortions. In this day and age it is different because abortion is a right ALREADY granted to us for over 40 years and now if it would be taken away, the fallout would be different because women have arranged their lives to be able to procure one if need be, and more women seek it now because now most women have to work, so childbearing is more of a burden than it was in the 1960's. In those days women mostly stayed home, did not work outside the home, pregnancy and childbearing was less of a burden than it is now.

So 1960's different era abortion was not acceptable or approved of then, now it is, a lot more difficult to take that right away without causing harm to millions of women in this country. About 1 in 5 women have had at least one abortion in their lifetime, that is a lot. If abortion is outlawed, it will create a huge black market for illegal abortions and a black market for the abortion pill.

I think you underestimate the fallout because you are basing your analogy to a time of 50 years ago, when most women were not in the workforce.

iam not going to discuss the panels with you again. The idea that a woman would have to go before a panel to try to reclaim her bodily autonomy and not be forced to gestate is beyond abhorrent. You reduce us to 2nd class citizens.

Acuyatanada: you also said:Whenever there is any unwanted pregnancy, there is rarely going to be any completely happy solution. We have to find the least of the evils. What is the least of evils? One pro-lifer pointed out, "If the unborn are not human, then I agree, we should make abortions as safe as possible, because the only human being in the equation (besides the abortionist) is the mother. If the unborn are human, then the safety of killing that human is not the topic we should be focused on."

The problem with this statement is the issues of rights, I believe the woman's right to terminate in the 1st trimester should outweigh the embroyo rights. I know it might sound callous, but I just believe woman's rights come first. You can't have both embroyo/fetus have the same rights as the woman. I believe her rights outweigh